Minimum

Minimum, the 2014 third-person shooter, is not a demanding title by modern standards, but the measured data for the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 combination reveals a clear performance hierarchy across its four presets. The benchmark results show a system that is capable of smooth 1080p play at medium settings, but which quickly becomes constrained at higher resolutions and graphical presets. This analysis walks through the measured FPS data to determine the optimal configuration, the role of each component, and how this specific pairing ranks against the broader database of tested hardware combinations.

Settings Recommendations

Based strictly on the measured FPS values, the Medium preset at 1920x1080 is the optimal configuration for this hardware combination. The average of 62 FPS clears the 60 FPS threshold for smooth gameplay, and the recorded minimum of 53 FPS indicates that the frame rate stays within a playable range even during more demanding scenes. While the Low preset offers a higher average of 81 FPS, the jump to Medium provides a substantial visual quality improvement for a 19 FPS average cost, which is a reasonable trade-off for a third-person shooter where responsiveness matters but visual clarity also enhances the experience.

At 2560x1440, the Medium preset drops to an average of 40 FPS, which is below the ideal 60 FPS target, making 1080p Medium the clear recommendation for a balance of performance and fidelity. The High preset at 1080p averages 52 FPS, which is playable but leaves less headroom for frame drops in busy combat scenarios, as the data shows no minimum FPS recorded for this setting, making the 53 FPS minimum of Medium a safer choice. The Ultra preset at 1080p yields only 40 FPS, which is not ideal for a shooter, and the data suggests that the visual gains from Ultra over High are not worth the performance penalty on this GPU. For users who prioritize frame rate above all else, the Low preset at 1080p is the only configuration that consistently stays above the 80 FPS mark, but for most players, Medium provides the best overall experience.

FAQ

Q: What is the highest average frame rate this combo can achieve at 1920x1080?

A: The highest measured average frame rate at 1920x1080 is 81 FPS, which is achieved with the Low preset. This is significantly higher than the High preset's 52 FPS and the Ultra preset's 40 FPS, indicating that the Low preset is the least demanding on the GPU.

Q: Is this combination capable of smooth 4K gameplay in Minimum?

A: No. The measured data at 3840x2160 shows that the best average frame rate is 28 FPS on the Low preset, with the Medium preset averaging 22 FPS and the High preset at 18 FPS. These figures are all well below the 60 FPS target for smooth gameplay, and the Ultra preset drops to 14 FPS, making 4K unplayable with this hardware.

Q: How does the frame rate scale from 1080p to 1440p on the Medium preset?

A: The average frame rate drops from 62 FPS at 1920x1080 to 40 FPS at 2560x1440 on the Medium preset. This represents a 22 FPS decrease, or roughly a 35% reduction in performance, which highlights the significant load increase that higher resolution places on the GTX 1650.

Q: What is the minimum FPS recorded for the Medium preset, and how does it vary by resolution?

A: The minimum FPS for the Medium preset is 53 at 1920x1080, 34 at 2560x1440, and 18 at 3840x2160. The maximum FPS for the same preset is 72 at 1080p, 46 at 1440p, and 25 at 4K, showing a consistent and predictable performance degradation as resolution increases.

Q: Does the Ultra preset ever provide a playable frame rate at any resolution?

A: No. The Ultra preset averages 40 FPS at 1920x1080, 26 FPS at 2560x1440, and 14 FPS at 3840x2160. None of these averages reach the 60 FPS threshold, and the 1080p result is the only one that approaches a minimum level of playability, though it still falls short of ideal smoothness.

Q: How does the GTX 1650's benchmark percentile relate to its in-game performance?

A: The GTX 1650 has a percentile rank of 40 among all GPUs, placing it in the lower half of the performance spectrum. This aligns with the measured in-game results, where it can handle 1080p Medium well but struggles with higher resolutions and settings, consistent with a mid-to-low-tier graphics card.

GPU Role

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 is the primary bottleneck in this combination for Minimum, as evidenced by the significant FPS drops when increasing resolution and settings. The GPU has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory, which is sufficient for a 2014 title, but the 128-bit memory bus and 128.1 GB/s bandwidth limit its ability to push high pixel counts at 4K. The GPU's base clock of 1485 MHz and boost clock of 1665 MHz are modest, and the 896 shading units are not enough to maintain high frame rates at demanding presets.

The benchmark results show that the GPU's performance is heavily influenced by resolution. At 1080p Low, the GTX 1650 achieves 81 FPS, but this drops to 28 FPS at 4K Low. This 53 FPS drop is a direct result of the increased pixel load, which saturates the GPU's pixel fill rate of 53.28 GPixel/s and texture rate of 93.24 GTexel/s. The GPU's 2.984 TFLOPS of FP32 compute power is adequate for the Low and Medium presets at 1080p, but the Ultra preset at 4K requires more processing power than the card can deliver, resulting in the lowest measured average of 14 FPS. The data clearly indicates that the GTX 1650 is the limiting factor in this system, as the CPU has enough headroom to feed the GPU at lower resolutions, but the GPU's compute and memory bandwidth become saturated as the workload increases.

Measured FPS Breakdown

At 1920x1080, the measured FPS values show a clear progression across settings. The Low preset delivers an average of 81 FPS, which is the highest of any configuration tested, and the Medium preset follows with an average of 62 FPS, a 19 FPS reduction. The High preset averages 52 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 40 FPS, representing a 41 FPS difference between the lowest and highest visual quality settings. The Medium preset has a recorded minimum of 53 FPS and a maximum of 72 FPS, indicating a frame time variance of 19 FPS, which is manageable for gameplay.

Moving to 2560x1440, the same settings pattern emerges with lower absolute numbers. The Low preset averages 52 FPS, the Medium preset averages 40 FPS (with a min of 34 and max of 46), the High preset averages 34 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 26 FPS. The drop from 1080p to 1440p is consistent, with the Low preset losing 29 FPS and the Medium preset losing 22 FPS, showing that the GPU's performance scales nearly linearly with pixel count.

At 3840x2160, the performance becomes marginal for all settings. The Low preset averages 28 FPS, the Medium preset averages 22 FPS (with a min of 18 and max of 25), the High preset averages 18 FPS, and the Ultra preset averages 14 FPS. The gap between Low and Ultra at 4K is only 14 FPS, which suggests that the GPU is so heavily constrained that the settings have a diminished impact on performance, as the pixel fill rate becomes the dominant limiting factor.

Resolution Scaling

The measured data shows a steep and consistent FPS decline as resolution increases from 1080p to 4K, which is a classic sign of a GPU-bound scenario. On the Low preset, the average frame rate drops from 81 FPS at 1080p to 52 FPS at 1440p, a 29 FPS decrease, and then to 28 FPS at 4K, another 24 FPS decrease. This represents a total reduction of 53 FPS, or about 65% of the original 1080p performance, when moving to 4K.

For the Medium preset, the average FPS goes from 62 at 1080p to 40 at 1440p and then to 22 at 4K. The resolution scaling here is slightly less severe than Low, with a 22 FPS drop from 1080p to 1440p and an 18 FPS drop from 1440p to 4K. This pattern holds for the High and Ultra presets as well, where the absolute FPS numbers are lower but the relative percentage drops are similar. The fact that the FPS drops are so pronounced with each resolution increase indicates that the GTX 1650's rendering capabilities are being taxed heavily, and the CPU is not a limiting factor in this title. If the CPU were the bottleneck, we would expect to see more consistent FPS across resolutions, but the data shows a clear inverse relationship between resolution and frame rate, confirming that the GPU is the primary constraint.

CPU Role

The Intel Core i5-9400 is a 6-core, 6-thread processor with a base clock of 2.90 GHz and a boost clock of 4.10 GHz, based on the Coffee Lake architecture. This CPU is not a bottleneck for the GTX 1650 in Minimum, as the measured FPS values are consistently lower at higher resolutions, which is the opposite of what a CPU-bound scenario would look like. In a CPU-limited situation, the FPS would stay relatively flat regardless of resolution, but the data shows a clear decline, indicating that the GPU is the limiting component.

The CPU's benchmark scores, such as a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of 6629 and a single-core score of 935, put it at the 47th percentile among all CPUs, which is a mid-range position. Its nearest rivals, like the Intel Core i7-1068NG7 and the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 1500, have very similar average scores with delta percentages of -0.2% and 0.4%, respectively, indicating that the i5-9400's processing power is well within the expected range for its class. For a game like Minimum, which is not known for heavy CPU usage, the i5-9400's 6 physical cores and 9 MB of shared L3 cache are more than sufficient to handle the game logic and physics at 1080p, allowing the GTX 1650 to be the sole determinant of frame rate. The CPU's 65W TDP and dual-channel DDR4 memory support with 42.7 GB/s bandwidth also ensure that there is no memory bandwidth bottleneck that could hinder FPS.

How This Combo Ranks

In the global database of tested hardware combinations for Minimum, the Intel Core i5-9400 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 pairing is ranked 3581 out of 3712 total combos. This places it in the bottom 3.5% of all tested configurations, which is a low position but is expected given the modest specifications of both components. The combo's rank is primarily driven by the GPU's performance, as the GTX 1650 has a percentile rank of 40 among all GPUs, which is below average. The CPU's percentile rank of 47 is higher, but in this game, the GPU's limitations are the determining factor.

Compared to other combos in the database, this pairing is positioned among systems that can handle 1080p gaming at medium settings but struggle with higher resolutions or maximum graphical presets. The measured FPS data supports this, as the 1080p Medium average of 62 FPS is a solid result for a 2014 title, but the 4K performance is on par with lower-end integrated graphics solutions. The combo's rank of 3581 indicates that there are many more powerful combinations available, but for its intended purpose of 1080p gaming, it delivers acceptable performance. The data does not place this combo in the upper echelon, but it also does not represent a failing configuration, as it can achieve playable frame rates at the most common resolution. The rank is a reflection of the hardware's age and tier, not a measure of its suitability for Minimum at lower settings.